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Michael Earls
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Lifestyle
    • Work & Leadership
    • Books & Learning
    • Security
    • Change
    • Cloud
    • Wine
    • Travel & Places
  • Direction
    • Before the World Wakes Up: Owning Your First Hour
    • Why Building Other People’s Legacies Is the Real Direction of Leadership
    • “Sounds Like Monday’s Problem” — A Lesson in Mental Boundaries
    • Morning Coffee, Quiet Time, and the Question: How Do I Become a Better Me in 2026?
    • The Digital Compass: Finding Direction in a Noisy World
    • Returning to Center — The Quiet Strength You Build Midweek
    • You Don’t Have 24 Hours. You Have 168.
    • Closing the Year: Reflecting on Change, Letting Go, and Setting Direction
  • Change
    • Week Three — When Change Gets Boring
    • Week Two — When Change Gets Quiet
    • From French Bread to Garlic Focaccia — What Bread Taught Me About Change (Again)
    • Week One — Change Is Already Happening
    • From Dutch Oven to Focaccia: What Bread Taught Me About Change
    • Closing the Year: Reflecting on Change, Letting Go, and Setting Direction
    • Awareness Before Change
    • Calibrating the Compass: When Goals Shift and Life Changes
    • From Streetlights to AI: Lessons in Fear, Change, and Opportunity
    • Reset the Compass, When the Wind Changes, So Should You
  • Cloud
    • Expert Mode, No Guardrails — But With Control
    • Single-Cloud First Was the Discipline — Now Let’s Talk About Movement
    • Single-Cloud First: Discipline, Not Dogma
    • Identity First: The Only Control Plane That Survives Every Cloud Decision
    • Agentic AI Isn’t Breaking Systems — It’s Exposing What We’ve Been Ignoring
    • Platform First: Paved Roads, Freedom, and the Cost of Both
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Posts Tagged ‘Leadership Lessons’

Leadership Isn’t About Being in Charge — It’s About What People Feel Around You

By mearls | February 8, 2026
leadership-energy-not-authority

Most people think leadership is about being in charge. It’s not. It’s about being responsible for the energy in the room. I’ve seen incredibly talented teams struggle, not because they lacked skill, but because the environment felt heavy. Unclear expectations. No trust. No room to grow. I’ve also seen average teams do extraordinary things because…

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